Azalea Potter
by Skysaber
Summary: After a costly victory in her own universe a Girl Who Lived leaves her own dark world in search of a new home - and finds a more classic Harry Potter just starting his own Goblet of Fire!
1. Chapter 1

Azalea Potter and the Boy-who-Lived

Hell Hath No Fury...

This Chapter by briandrozd2000  
modified by Skysaber

OoOoO

Azalea Harriette Potter, known by the loathed monikers Harri Potter, the Girl-who-Lived, and the Witch-who-Conquered, allowed herself to smile as she saw her former friends begin the ritual. She was abusing the life-debt each of those here owed her, and soon it would all be over.

It had been seven long years since she had finally killed that bastard Tom Riddle. Surprisingly her life had only gotten worse after that. Before Voldemort's death at her hand, she had figured her life couldn't get worse. After all, she was still living with her Aunt and Uncle every summer and had had to deal with Snape and Malfoy at Hogwarts. Living with the Dursleys had become an exercise in paranoia as she reached her teens, her uncle and cousin only kept from sexually abusing her thanks to her accidental magic, and while she had no fear of her aunt raping her, Aunt Petunia had rapidly become the most violent of the trio as Harri's likeness to her mother grew. Hogwarts offered little safety with both Snape and Malfoy attempting to force themselves upon her. The thought of what might have happened were she not practically immune to the imperious curse always left her cold. All of the other professors seemed to be more than willing to turn a blind eye to Snape's advances and abuse of power, and under Dumbledore's reign as headmaster, Malfoy could have gotten away with murder.

It was ironic, in a way, that the only person Malfoy truly tried to murder was Dumbledore himself.

Hunting down the horcruxes was practically a vacation for her compared to the constant fear she had had to deal since her fourteenth birthday. There were times during the hunt where she actually felt safe, after all.

With Voldemort's death however, Kingsley's ministry and what remained of the Order of the Phoenix began moving against her. For about a week or two, she was toted around as a champion, and told repeatedly that the wizarding world of Europe owed her their lives. Then, in an effort to show 'healing' from the war, they tried to force her into marriage with Malfoy.

Even now, her throat filled with bile at the thought of Malfoy touching her in any way.

Hopefully the muggle-style letter bomb she'd sent to the bastard before the ritual began would take care of that nightmare. At least it ought to spoil his ongoing wedding plans.

She had fled from Europe. After even her supposed friends had turned on her she felt she had little choice. It was also yet another reason to loath the nickname 'Harri' that all of her friends insisted upon using. Honestly, what was wrong with 'Azalea'? She'd come to like the luxury of having her first name be used while abroad.

Traveling across the world was a boon to her. For the first time since her fourteenth birthday, she felt truly safe. Oh, sure, she had to always look over her shoulder for British aurors or Order members hoping to kidnap her, but that was just it. Everywhere else in the world, their actions would be kidnapping, and she could count on aid from local aurors and other good Samaritans, unlike back in Britain where the only one she could count on was herself.

Muggle doctors and magical healers had mostly managed to correct the ravages the years of malnourishment, abuse, and neglect had caused her, and this ritual would do the rest. She had learned a variety of magic during her travels, from ancient runes to golem crafting and advanced transfiguration to a dozen of forms of magic British wizards had long disdained as barbaric or even 'dark': Chinese-style alchemy, chi sorcery, Native American shamanism, sympathetic magic, and even a few old druidic practices preserved by the colonists.

The ritual that was currently happening was one of her own design, a combination of several rituals she wanted done. Azalea lay on the freshly skinned pelt of a jaguar she'd slain herself as part of the initiation rites of Aztec jaguar warriors, in a reed boat, on the central slab of rock in a druidic circle, wearing the dwarf-wrought chainmail and ceremonial regalia of a maiden to enter service as a valkyrie, bearing the runes and totems of Cherokee eagle shamans and Norse bear soldiers, surrounded by pots and jars full of the secrets of Chinese alchemy and Egyptian sorcery, with an Irish bone harp resting at her feet, and those were just the more recognizable elements in the vast web of painted ink runes and symbols surrounding her in the druidic stone ring.

She'd contacted her one-time friends and promised she'd return to England if they agreed to pay back their life-debt by performing this ritual.

Even Dumbledore would have been hard pressed to realize the ritual required the sacrifice of all other participants save the subject - namely herself. It was too bad he was already nine years dead, and thus unable to participate. The Aztecs had been undisputed masters of sacrificial magic, with more than a dozen ways to destroy a human life in return for power, and the druids had not a few themselves. And what better way to destroy your enemies than to transform their lives into benefit for oneself?

Seeing those who had betrayed her repeatedly start to silently scream in pain, even as the magic in the ritual forced them to complete it warmed her heart in a way that she couldn't even begin to describe.

The first part of the ritual after a web of initiation rites was expanding and supercharging her magical core, changing it and her DNA with it. While she had agreed to return to England, she'd never agreed to stay; and once the ritual was complete, her altered magical signature would allow her to disappear completely from the ministry's radar. As far as any magical tracing or detection would care, 'Harri Potter' would be dead. The alterations to her DNA - purely a side effect of changing her magical core - would ensure that even if British wizards ever thought to try finding her though such muggle methods, they'd fail. That this part of the ritual would regress her age back to seventeen was just another side effect of the Aztec magic involved, one year for every life lost as part of the ritual, and one she couldn't decide was a blessing or a curse, as she'd grown to enjoy the respect afforded to herself as a maturing adult and her youth did not have many good memories associated with it.

The pain that she'd normally be experiencing due to such extensive and permanent physiological changes was naturally being shunted to her betrayers instead. No reason for her to go through that torture when her 'friends' had so eagerly volunteered.

The second part of the ritual was combining some of that sympathetic magic with good old Egyptian necromancy, specifically tomb robbing curses. The target of that part of the ritual was actually the galleons, sickles, and knuts she carried on her. She carried only the barest fraction of her fortune - seven coins of each type - but the voodoo would use the coins on her as a representation of the rest of her fortune still within the goblin vaults. The necromancy was the wasting disease that the rest of her fortune would carry; anyone touching galleons, sickles, or knuts that belonged to her would catch a disease that would rot away their bodies, eventually killing them, so long as the twenty-one coins she owned remained hers. Better still, since the curse was on the coins she carried with her, it would be undetectable on the rest of her fortune to any of the goblins' or Ministry's standard tests. Even a curse-breaker like Bill, who was familiar with Egyptian curses, wouldn't be able to find the magic that was killing them, as it wasn't directly on any of the coins in her vaults.

And her will, which thanks to the first part of the ritual would be active as soon as the ritual finished, was all set to offer to divide her remaining fortune among anyone in the wizarding world who wanted some. Between the size of the combined Potter-Black fortunes at about six million galleons and the reduced size of the British wizarding world at a little above thirty thousand, everyone would get at least two hundred galleons and change out of it. And the traitorous and greedy goblins would be the first to go.

Of course, the second part would keep the sacrifices alive until the last of the fortune was divided up among those who wanted it; they had to be alive to witness the curse begin.

It was the third part that would ensure their death however. It would send her to someplace she could call home, someplace far beyond the reach of whatever British wizards might survive the plague she was about to unleash upon them, someplace where she could belong and find true friends and maybe a boyfriend who would love her for who she is and not her fame, someplace where she could still make a difference. And maybe, if she were really lucky, someplace where she could gain some measure of vengeance against the two people who had made her life hell, but would still escape this last bit of vengeance: Dumbledore and Snape.

Azalea could only smile as the ritual was finished, and those who had consistently betrayed her could finally scream in pain before finally collapsing, all completely unconscious. She sat up in her boat and did a quick glance over the gunwales at the limp bodies to count them and verify they were all out. Hermione Granger - the know-it-all bookworm who'd been her first ever friend, only to abandon her when rumors suggested she was the heir of Slytherin in their second year, and then once more after she was named by the Goblet of Fire. Ron Weasley - according to the press her first boyfriend, the first boy to try taking liberties with her within Hogwarts' halls and then getting away with it while she was the one reprimanded. Ginny Weasley - her second friend, the girl she'd saved from the Chamber of Secrets, who constantly tried to pimp her off to whatever guy wanted her. Arthur and Molly Weasley - her surrogate parents who'd granted 'official' approval of the proposed marriage to Malfoy. George Weasley - her surviving business partner who with his twin had sold pornographic pictures of her through the shop she'd provided the money for. And finally Remus Lupin - wolf animagus and supposed friend to her parents, who'd consistently used his position as her godfather to strip away her rights and sell her out to Dumbledore, enforcing her virtual enslavement at the Dursleys through his legal authority over her, and who had in the end faked his death during the war, cowardly leaving his wife and child to be killed so he could live, then hiding out until it was all over - just like his friend Peter had done after the first war.

Azalea nodded in satisfaction, and went over the last remaining steps in her plans. Around her in the reed boat were tucked in dozens of magic trunks, some she'd acquired during her travels, others she'd made herself, all packed with gems, jewelry, magical artifacts, books and treasures from her vaults, and the shrunken furniture from a half dozen houses, basically everything she owned that wasn't British magical coins. Most of this were things she'd been forced to leave behind when fleeing out of England and that she hadn't been able to get to while out touring the world, including both Black and Potter libraries. All of these chests had recently been covered in gold leaf and the hieroglyphics of grave goods that were to follow a person as they passed into the next world - which was exactly her intentions.

Wealth was power, and Azalea Potter had had enough of being powerless in her life.

Most of her real property, houses and such, had been sold off long ago, either by Remus to fuel his wild parties and outlandish high living lifestyle while she was left to languish and labor in poverty and squalor, or by Dumbledore to run his secret projects. The rest would sadly have to be left behind as she couldn't sell them off without alerting people to her plan. But she'd left them empty and filled with enough traps to keep a team of curse breakers busy for years, deeding them in her will to Ministry toads like Percy, Fudge and Umbridge. If they found the traps and curses in time they might not be killed by them, but the cost of removing them from the houses would be greater than the value of those estates.

There was one other chest, one she would not be taking with her, that one covered in the hieroglyphs used by Egyptian priests to make offerings to the dead, and safely hidden away in a safety deposit box in Switzerland. Inside it, fused to the bottom of the lid, were exact mates of the twenty-one coins she carried on her person, identical down to cuts and scrapes and dates of printing and already sympathetically linked to the ones she carried. As long as the safety deposit box was in her name and those coins were in it, the curse would continue; once she could no longer claim to 'own' those coins, the curse would stop affecting British wizarding coins that she owned. But due to good old Egyptian tomb curses, every time someone died who had taken coins from her, the stolen coins would return to that chest and the magic of the offering hieroglyphs would send them across worlds to a mated chest she was taking with her - one with an expanded interior able to hold all of that money.

Once the last of those six million coins got returned to her, which would happen only after British wizarding world was mostly dead, a Viking rune would destroy both the chest left behind and its coins, terminating the sympathetic link. Then she could break the original curse on the twenty-one coins she carried and be ok. Meanwhile a squib lawyer she had retained would sell off the box along with remains of the coins within. Until then, she would be unable to buy using galleons, sickles or knuts, as any of those she owned would catch the curse.

Not that that was a problem. Galleons, sickles and knuts were only the currency of magical Europe. Asia, Africa and the Americas all had their own versions, and those coins weren't cursed. So the bulk of her vast fortunes, everything she wasn't leaving behind, had already been converted over into those. When she had first left Great Britain, she had a fraction of the Potter-Black fortune - small enough that only the most detailed audit would reveal it - converted to muggle accounts under the name Azalea Harriette Grove. She had added to those accounts whenever she could during her long journey, while continuing to spend from the Gringotts held fortune instead. All in all, her muggle fortune had been quite substantial. Before returning to Britain, she'd converted that fortune into something portable that wouldn't leave much of a paper trail: muggle minted gold, silver, and precious gems in preparation for her upcoming journey, wherever it might take her. Even if she was limited to muggle cash, she carried samples of each that she could duplicate with charms at need.

All things considered, six million galleons was not a lot to pay for destroying the world that had consistently betrayed her. Especially when she'd be getting that money back.

With a cruel smirk, Azalea stood up, never having left the confines of her enchanted reed boat since the ritual began. After all, that would recreate a link to her current world, and the ancient Egyptian rites for moving on to the next one would have to be done again. In the bow stirred the winged horse that would serve her as a valkyrie, invisible in spite of not being a thestral. It would be making the journey with her, either into a better life if this worked out right, or to bodily move her into Heaven if it didn't. At this point she didn't much care which, as either way she'd be safe from her tormentors at last. Carefully moving to the stern, chainmail jingling as she did so, she used a copper knife to cut the flax cord binding her reed boat to this world and lifted up the ash pole to shove off, rising up off the rough stone slab and into the air, already phasing between worlds just as the Egyptian scrolls had promised.

Her 'friends' had felt they'd been canny, layering the area outside the ritual site with wards and spells to prevent her escape. They'd even put a ring around the ritual area under a Fidelius, so she couldn't even find the ground outside of the ancient druidic stone circle. Plus they'd felt quite confident in their wards against apparition, portkeys or flying. But none of that prevented her passing on to the next world, as the Egyptian rites had prepared her for.

And though they thought she didn't notice, part of the 'personal gear' they'd brought along for the after-ritual welcome back party had been gifts of jewelry - a necklace and bracelets that were effectively manacles, made to ensure she'd never leave the island again. Her 'friends' would have put those on her throat and wrists the moment they'd met her save for the fact that she'd insisted they'd interfere with the ritual they'd all sworn to do. And they would have. They'd keep her here, and that ran directly contrary to the intent of her ritual.

Because she was used to attempts to trap her, she also carried a Portkey-equivalent she'd created using methods she'd picked up in Asia, just in case. Her variation of the Portkey really used a method similar to phoenix travel based on the idea that fire expands outward in all directions. And similar to phoenix travel, no mere anti-portkey or anti-apparition ward could stop it. Not even the ones her so-called friends had placed over the ritual site.

Within moments Azalea was no longer in Britain, or even in that world.

OoOoO

Dennis Creevey could only smile wanly at the stack of Daily Prophet papers pilled before him. He had seen what the adults had wanted to do to poor Harri Potter and it had sickened him. So much so, that he'd all but walked out on the wizarding world as soon as he finished his OWLs.

He never did return to Hogwarts. Between the death of his brother Colin and the persecution of his heroine Harri, he despised Hogwarts, and had opted to instead go to a smaller, less prestigious school to finish his magical training. Ironically, this had done wonders for improving his education, especially in Potions. He went to work in the muggle-version of Arthur Weasley's department, a fairly new department created by the Prime Minister in response to everything that had happened with Voldemort.

When he'd heard the rumor that Harri had agreed to return provided she could get volunteers to perform a ritual with her, he'd suspected something was up. When he heard she'd died in the ritual - according to the Prophet's pundits, she'd preferred death to marrying the Malfoy heir - he knew something dangerous was coming. It was doubtlessly true that Harri would have preferred dying to marrying Malfoy, but Harri was unlikely to return simply to kill herself, even in a botched ritual.

No, the ritual had worked, and worked perfectly. Harri was alive, but had somehow convinced the goblins that she was dead. And she was likely plotting vengeance of some sort.

When the Prophet announced that Harri's will was offering galleons to any British wizard or witch who wanted them, he'd promptly headed to Gringotts to close all of his accounts and transfer all of his funds to muggle pounds. He'd advised all of the people he worked with to do the same thing if they had any galleons at all.

Within a week he was proven correct. The Prophet's headlines reported that all of those who had participated in the ritual with Harri Potter had died, their magical cores completely drained, but hidden in the back pages were reports of a few unusual cases of an unidentified rotting disease. Days later escrows had begun to close on the houses she'd bequeathed, and Ministry officers started disappearing.

Another week, and the unidentified rotting disease was front page news, and panic was starting to settle in among the wizards. Gringotts itself was already reported to be nothing more than a tomb; the goblins had all contracted the same disease and started dropping like flies. He'd been prepared for it since he'd first heard about Harri's will, and had riot police in place near areas where the muggle world and magical world intersected. Thankfully as yet no one had been harmed in a riot.

Of course, now, there were scarcely enough wizards left to riot.

And he was callous enough about the whole thing that he didn't care. Worse, when he'd reported this plague and his suspicions that anyone who had not accepted money from Harri's will would be fine to the PM, the PM had only looked relieved, and Dennis couldn't find it in himself to disagree with that sentiment.

The last Prophet had been published this morning. The vast majority of the British wizarding world was now dead, and many of those that remained were dying. There weren't enough remaining healthy wizards or witches to maintain their own ministry, much less maintain a paper. Diagon and Knockturn Alleys were both abandoned. Hogsmead was a ghost town, and Hogwarts had shut down. Soon he, on behalf of the Queen and the muggle government, would have to deal with the survivors - mostly children too young to have laid any claim to Harri's fortune.

For now however, he filled a shot glass and raised it in a toast. "To you, Harri. You've got your revenge on all those bastards who forgot what we've sacrificed fighting Voldemort. May you have better luck wherever you are."

OoOoO

Azalea Grove woke from a trill of magic to find herself surprisingly cold. It had been the end of July when she'd had the ritual performed, fortunate as the linens provided by Egyptian rites did not provide much warmth and the combination of rituals did not provide much more other than the chainmail, a jaguar cape, and thick bearskin boots, but here - wherever here was - it was clearly much cooler. A quick glance around showed it was evening and she was near Hogwarts, her spirit barge floating a few feet off the ground. Her horse had dismounted from the ship and was grazing on the grass - creating a clear physical link between her and this world. She'd have to perform the moving on rites all over if she wanted to try this again.

But apparently those references to sleeping through the voyage applied regardless of whether the person making the trip was living or dead. It had been the magical feel of her bonded valkyrie steed forming a link to this world that had awoken her.

She frowned, realizing she'd somehow been stopped by the wards of the school. Her so-called friends really might have outsmarted her, insisting to use the stone circle closest to the school. Hopefully she hadn't set off anything to alert whoever the current headmaster or headmistress of Hogwarts was to her presence. It would be really bad if her friends woke or others found her before she had time to figure out where and when she was.

Knowing she had to investigate to find out any information at all, she tapped some of her druidic knowledge and transformed into a nondescript owl. She wasn't a true animagus - at least not as the British ministry had defined the term - but instead used the older pre-wand form the animagi training was later based on. The druidic rites required a lot more control and raw power than the wizarding animagi transformation, but allowed her to pick any natural form she wanted, even to the point of being able to be a white owl one day and a brown owl the next, something no animagi could do. With a quick flap of her wings, she launched herself out of her floating reed boat and flew up to the Great Hall, and peeked inside, careful to stay up in the rafters.

It took only a moment to recognize the scene. The goblet of fire sitting upon its pedestal and spewing out Victor Krum's name was more than enough of a clue. With a growing sense of horror born of seeing her own memories play out before her, she almost missed seeing who stood when Dumbledore caught the forth contestant's name, cleared his throat, and called out "Harry Potter."

Azalea was quite glad owls couldn't gasp when she spotted the tiny figure that was the spitting image of her father rise.

This would certainly be interesting.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

With some minor additions, the previous installment was done by briandrozd2000 of the CaerAzkaban forum, who gave it up for adoption. I nibbled, and he told me to go for it. 


	2. Chapter 2

Azalea Potter and the Boy-who-Lived

Chapter 2

by Skysaber

OoOoO

Harry sat there, aware that every head in the Great Hall had turned to look at him. He was stunned. He felt numb. He was surely dreaming. He could not have heard correctly.

There was no applause. A buzzing, as though of angry bees, was starting to fill the Great Hall; some students were standing up to get a better look at Harry as he sat, frozen, in his seat.

Looking down on this from above, Azalea would have smirked if an owl's beak could have managed it. However could anyone believe that boy had done this? He was so obviously gobsmacked it was ridiculous! Had she looked so lost, alone and confused when this had happened to her?

Well, if it had there was even less excuse for people to have treated her as they did.

And what was with this school? This creepy silence was such a change from when the Hufflepuff table had raised such an uproar for Cedric, every puff on their feet stamping and screaming their approval just moments before.

Up at the top table, Professor McGonagall had got to her feet and swept passed Ludo Bagman and Professor Karkaroff to whisper urgently to Professor Dumbledore, who bent his ear toward her, frowning slightly.

Azalea would have frowned, again, if an owl's face could have handled such an expression. From appearance it was easy to guess that McGonagall was trying to intercede with the Headmaster, who himself was acting surprised, as though being forced by circumstances to send Harry to participate regardless.

But she knew how easily appearances could deceive around the Master Manipulator. All the world was a stage to him, and he the best actor of the lot.

Down below, Harry turned to Ron and Hermione; beyond them, he saw the long Gryffindor table all watching him, open-mouthed.

"I didn't put my name in," Harry protested blankly. "You know I didn't."

Both of them stared just as blankly back, and Azalea knew from experience that he wouldn't be getting any help from them.

At the top table, Professor Dumbledore had straightened up, nodding to Professor McGonagall. "Harry Potter!" he called again. "Harry! Up here, if you please!"

Seeing the boy so lost and alone, knowing this was the end of what happiness he had at Hogwarts and that the long slide had begun into the wizarding world losing its wonder and his home and sanctuary becoming near terminally degrading and abusive to him, Azalea had begun to act long before she made a conscious choice to intervene.

Changing into a copy of her own long dead but fondly remembered white owl, Balthazar, and hoping no one noticed she was female, Azalea swooped down out of the rafters and settled on the shoulder of the boy who looked so much like her father, giving his ear an affectionate nip just as her own owl had long ago done.

Everyone seemed to accept her presence, in fact her appearance and unspoken vote of support seemed to steady Harry, so whatever flaws there were in her disguise they were not being noted yet.

Suddenly a perverse desire seized hold of the girl as Harry got to his feet, trod on the hem of his robes, and stumbled slightly, forcing her to spread her wings to compensate or be thrown from off his shoulder.

This day, this hour, had been the beginning of the end for her in her own wizarding world; and from what she could tell in the moments she'd been there everything seemed identical for this boy who looked just like her father. Even her gamble about impersonating an owl she had once owned seemed to have paid off.

So assuming that the default was for things to be more alike than they were different, which evidence seemed to bear out so far, why not change things to the way she wanted them to be? Before she'd lost all hope of reconciling with her wizarding world she'd had more than a few daydreams about this time, about how they might have gone differently, dreams of how she might've been accepted instead of vilified if things had been just a bit different.

It required a little blood contact to execute her plan, but that was easily arranged by adding a little pressure to one of her talons, as if uncertain of her grip. Instantly her mind was in the boy's body, taking control while he was too dazed to do anything else - a variant of the technique Tom Riddle had used on her in the Department of Mysteries.

Harry's body went from gawking and uncertain to powerful and poised, stopping before he reached the head table to throw his shoulders back and declare. "Headmaster Dumbledore, esteemed guests," the boy's head nodded to each in turn, "I would like to declare here and now that I did not enter my name into this contest. I did not arrange for it to be entered, nor did I give permission to be entered, and I would like to withdraw as I believe this unlawful and involuntary entry to be yet another attempt on my life. I swear this is so!"

Azalea in Harry's body held his wand aloft as the tip glowed white with the clear, bright aura of a true oath. The hall gasped and the whispering redoubled.

She could feel hundreds upon hundreds of eyes upon them. The shocked gazes of the teachers nearly stared a hole through her, while Harry was still curled up in shock at the back of his own mind; but at least he wasn't contesting her control of his body, even though it looked like the owl on his shoulder had gone to sleep. Luckily bird talons were designed to hold on, even during sleep.

She'd just cost Harry the 'poor unfortunate soul, too shocked to think' image. But no one had ever believed her innocence from that source anyway. So might as well try for an alternate approach. At least this way there was magical evidence to support her claim.

It would be a mite harder for Dumbledore to start those ugly rumors against her now. Not that she believed that would stop him, but it would be a trifle harder.

"Well... through the door, Harry," said Dumbledore. He wasn't smiling.

Lowered the wand, whose tip was still brightly glowing, Azalea cocked Harry's face up at the old man, confident her Occlumency shields could hold up to any assault short of a wand powered incantation. "So you are ignoring my request to be removed then?"

Once more Professor McGonagall stood and whispered urgently in the Headmaster's ear. But once more whatever objection she'd made, if it was an objection, got ignored. Heck, for all the good it had done, she might have whispered baseball scores to the old crackpot. The only thing it did was shore up the old man's image as a kindly grandfather listening to all sides yet forced by circumstance into this course of action anyway.

Not that she believed that for a moment. Circumstances danced to Dumbledore's control, NOT the other way around!

"I'm afraid I have no choice, Harry," Dumbledore intoned in sorrowful tones.

"Not to disrespect you, Headmaster, but bullshit!" Azalea shot back at him, shocking the whole audience. "I was looking forward to a nice quiet year of not having to fight for my life, for a change. I DID NOT ENTER! Lacking all other options, you and the other headmasters and headmistresses can declare this contest a draw, releasing all of the contestants. After all, you are the judges, that *is* within your authority, and this whole event was only being held to promote school unity - a goal hardly achieved when it is felt Hogwarts is cheating by having double the champions of any other!"

There came some angry mumbling among the various schools over that allegation, and Dumbledore had to feel the glares of Karkaroff and Maxine on the back of his head.

But Dumbledore had never been able to be ruffled by so small a thing as that. "I'm afraid it doesn't work like that, Harry. The goblet's fire has just gone out. It won't reignite until the start of the next tournament."

"Then start another in a week!" Azalea insisted.

Eyes twinkling, Dumbledore soothed, "I'm afraid that won't be fair to the other champions who have already been selected, Harry. After all, they want to compete."

"And who says it won't just select them over again? They are the best, aren't they?"

"They will have graduated by the time we may begin again, Harry."

She noted Dumbledore did not state any particular reason for that delay, and privately she was certain there was none. The long lapse in holding this event proved there was no set time scale to these things, in her opinion. But she didn't think her audience would buy her side if she stood there debating the particulars of the function of an ancient magical artifact with someone as esteemed as Dumbledore.

So she chose another tack to pursue.

"They're also considerably older and more trained than I am, and the tasks will be geared to their level. You'd risk my life over their having a shot at a little glory? Fine!" Azalea folded Harry's arms over his chest. "The goblet's only job is to select contestants - it has done so! Declare it a draw to release us from the contract, then have them go on with this tournament without a magical constraint - or have them enter into a new one of a different sort if you're so all-fired insistent they have to be forced into this!"

"I can't do that, Harry," the old man told her, now offering no excuse.

"Why?" She was determined not to let him off the hook.

There were now quite a few angry glares or confused and puzzled glances being directed toward Dumbledore as it became increasingly clear that Harry Potter wanted no part in this - but the Headmaster wasn't letting him out, despite several very reasonable suggestions.

"The rules of the Tri-Wizard Tournament forbid it."

"Ah, the 'I know better than you do, shut up and do as you're told' approach," Azalea got angry, and the face she was wearing reflected that. "Already the fact that we've got FOUR champions breaks all the rules and makes this no longer a *TRI*-Wizard tournament at all! You DARE to stand before me *dripping* with all the political authority the magical world knows how to give, holding more offices than any wizard before you has held - EVER, and DARE to whine 'We are helpless'? NO! I refuse to believe that! It doesn't work that way. Every participating school except for this one hates the very idea of me competing. You could redraw those rules right here and now to remove me if you were willing. No! The only reason you are hiding behind any of these flimsy excuses is because you WANT me to face this death trap! Just as you have flung me into danger *every year* before this one!"

"Nevertheless..." Dumbledore began, shocking several of his listeners.

"Save it," Azalea snapped. By now half the hall was white-faced, many in anger, several in shock at the dressing down she was giving this most respected figure. "When I first was told about this school it was billed as the safest place in the magical world. Since coming here, however, I have been assaulted by Death Eaters, dementors, trolls, and fought a thousand year old basilisk to save YOUR career after it had already petrified students. I have fought Voldemort IN THESE HALLS! Survived attempts on my life by professors YOU hired! Been endangered by rogue bludgers, sent to face Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest on a simple DETENTION! And to top it off I have been mocked and ridiculed as I fought for my life, and the lives of my fellow students at this supposed institution of learning. And as if that weren't enough now you want to thrust me into danger yet again."

She drew her current body up, glaring at him. "Albus Dumbledore, it is clear to me that you are seeking to take away my life by any and all means at your disposal. The fact that you have the Death Eater who targeted my parents and the Longbottoms to Voldemort here on staff as your closest advisor ought to be evidence enough of that!"

In the background, Neville gasped, his face now turning white.

"McGonagall has..." Dumbledore began, his voice taking on his 'I'm annoyed now' tones.

"You use her to handle your administrative duties, because you've got too many jobs to do any of them well," Azalea rolled over his objections. "But whenever there's conflict between her and Snape you *always* side with Snape! Always! That by definition makes him your most trusted and therefore closest advisor! And the fact that you hold the one person aside from Voldemort most responsible for my parents' deaths as your best friend says enough about your motivations to make everything else clear."

Dumbledore, appearing aggrieved, opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off by raising her wand and declaring, "I now formally withdraw myself from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and shall never more be a student of it!"

The flare off the top of the wand she held was blinding. Gasps ran the length of the Great Hall, as if what went before had not been shocking enough.

Dumbledore's look was pained. "I'm sorry, Harry. But you must still compete. And you must still represent a long established school. Therefore..."

"Albus!" McGonagall hissed, this time loud enough to be heard by the entire hall. Her own distress over her student's recent oath and departure of their school was plain to behold.

Taking hold of this opportunity, Azalea declared, "Since you still insist on endangering my life yet more," she turned to look around the Great Hall expressively, "and since all schools now present already have representatives, in order that things remain equal and fair among the schools themselves I shall be forced to champion one not present."

Dumbledore's face now looked stricken as she concluded, with upraised wand, "So long as I am being forced to compete in this tournament, I shall do so as the Salem Witch Institute champion!"

Once more the flash of white light out of the tip of the wand she was holding was blinding, and the robes she had on spontaneously transformed into the appropriate uniform for the school she'd just named.

OoOoO

She'd never expected giving old Bumbles-more a public scolding to have felt so GOOD!!

Quite therapeutic.

She hadn't been able to help herself and giggled as she'd skipped out of the Great Hall to wait with the other champions, noting as she left that the looks on all the headmasters' faces were now equally unhappy. But Maxime and Karkaroff at least looked a little vindicated, while Albus was purely mortified.

The room she was in was the same as before, lined by paintings of witches and wizards and with a handsome fire roaring in the fireplace opposite. If she'd had any floo powder on her she would have used it then, but she didn't.

Victor, Cedric and Fleur were all grouped around the fire. Fleur looked up when the door opened and admitted one more. Throwing back her sheet of long, silvery hair that Azalea'd envied once or twice, the veela demanded, "What is it? Do zey want us back in ze hall?"

Harry didn't know how to explain what had just happened, but he wasn't in the driver's seat, and Azalea could and did. "No, I'm afraid not. Dumbledore decided on his own authority to include a fourth school against everyone else's wishes. Now it looks like there are four champions instead of the three we were all expecting; and altogether against my will I am forced to compete, so am representing the Salem Witch Institute."

She wasn't going to bear any blame for this without a fight. Oh no! Not *this* time! Put the load back on Dumbledore, who'd caused it. And it felt good in a way she could not describe to be standing up for herself through what had before been one of the most traumatizing, confusing and unsettling experiences of her life.

It was cleansing in a very good way, exorcising some of the demons of her past.

There came a moment of silence. Victor guffawed. Fleur looked stunned, while Cedric was confused. Leaning forward, the lone Hogwarts champion asked, "Potter? How did you come to represent an all-girls school?"

Azalea felt shocked, having gotten so caught up that for a moment she'd forgotten she was there in control of her male double's body and not simply reliving these experiences in her own past. Then at once she recalled it was four years in the future that she'd been at Salem for her remedial 'catch the Hogwarts graduate up to the rest of the world's standards' courses, and only that year were they beginning to become an open enrollment school.

Her shock was bad enough to shake her control, and the original occupant of that body chose to overcome his own confusion and shock long enough to throw her out. Azalea, back in her original if shapeshifted form, took wing to fly up to a shadowed corner on top of a bookcase. Looking down on the confused boy as he collected himself, she had to remark, if only to herself, "Well, at least he got the *boy's* version of the uniform!"

Actually, she'd been rather happy at Salem, which was why she'd picked them. There was the standard two year drop in grade for anyone transferring out of Europe, but overall the environment had been so improved without all the prejudices of the old world that it had been the most enjoyable educational experience she'd had in a formal school environment.

Far from being hated, to the boys she'd been just a pretty face with a cool accent. And to the girls someone 'in the know' about some of the worst scandals then facing Europe. She'd also been so newly gone from England back then they weren't trying nearly as hard to get her to return, and most of that was attempts to convince her, not kidnap her.

If she'd not been so newly burned by all the betrayals, she could have made much more out of that experience than she'd done, maybe even made some lasting friends instead of passing acquaintances. But still Salem ranked among the better periods of her life.

The door behind Harry opened again and a large group of people came in: Ludo Bagman, Professor Dumbledore, Professor Karkaroff, Madam Maxime, Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape - because Dumbledore never went anywhere without his Death Eater pet (Azalea forgave herself for being a little bitter, but there was no better excuse for that creep being present in this conference at this time when the only role he served was to insult and belittle Harry at a time when he very much did NOT need to be insulted).

Hmm, come to think of it, the boy had gone and withdraw into shock again. In a heartbeat his pet owl had rejoined him, once again on his shoulder, just as the buzzing of hundreds of students on the other side of the wall got cut off by McGonagall closing the door.

"What is THAT slimy haired *creature* doing here!?" Azalea demanded at once, pointing one of Harry's fingers she once again controlled at Snape. "As near as I recall, he has NO position of authority over me, no part in the tournament, and no reason to be here. As he is a personal enemy to both me and my family I demand he leave *at once*!"

Snape's black eyes lit up with an indignant fire Azalea had never seen before. Gone was the lust and covetousness, replaced wholly by disgust and anger. "You arrogant! Aaargh!"

The blasting curse that took his arm off at the shoulder was one of the most satisfying thrills Azalea had ever experienced in her life, even if the attempted rapist bastard had dodged at the last second so it only took off his arm instead of blown his chest wide open. But at this close range, with no prior notice of attack, he'd had no chance to escape it all.

The room exploded into motion. When it was done Harry was seated on a sofa, bound up in ropes. Snape was gone, but so was McGonagall, who presumably had left to take him to the hospital wing, and the occupants of that small chamber were regarding Harry with a mixture of concern and fear.

Azalea simply lifted Harry chin in response. "As a contestant in a life or death struggle, I felt my life was endangered by the presence of a known murderer with a grudge against me and my family, and acted accordingly."

Her glare dared them to respond. You could have heard a pin drop.

Dumbledore looked as though his puppy had just died. He *knew* the law supported her on the grounds she had just stated. Hmph. Well, if Snape had never been told to keep his distance for her protection, maybe he would now - for his!

That was his good arm he'd just lost, too. Awful hard to mix potions with your off-hand.

Fleur found her voice first. "You cannot mean zat zis wild leetle boy ees to compete also! Zere must be some mistake!"

"Yeah. He can't compete, he's too young," Cedric was shaking his head.

Victor Krum kept his silence, but his gaze was far from friendly.

Fleur crossed her arms and again tossed her wave of silvery hair. "Zis joke, eet ees in vairy poor taste."

In sepulcher tones devoid of any degree of merriment whatsoever, Dumbledore replied, "I am afraid no one is joking, Miss Delacour. Harry's name came out of the Goblet of Fire. Therefore he is bound to compete."

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

The short form of it is our little Azalea Potter thinks nothing of taking drastic measures to remove her enemies. She's been driven to extreme measures long ago, and finally had enough to the point where nobody who offends her is safe. No one.

But she's also far from dumb, and won't act if she thinks the cost is greater than the reward. She also won't be seen, too often, to break the rules as that just gets the government on your back early, and she's had far too much of that already.

However, she has an exacting knowledge of just how far to push those rules and still get away with it, including all sorts of exemptions and loopholes.

As for Dumbledore not noticing Harry is possessed, take your pick: either he is more innocent than the scheming headmaster Azalea knew in the world she left behind, in which case we have the bumbling fool who makes well-meaning mistakes and never noticed that Quirrel was possessed either, or that his best friend was being impersonated by a Death Eater, or we have the manipulative bastard she knows so well, in which case he is just pretending not to notice while he formulates a response. 


	3. Chapter 3

Azalea Potter and the Boy-who-Lived

Chapter 3

by Skysaber

OoOoO

"I'll need separate quarters," Azalea told the room at large as she finished shrugging off the ropes that no longer held her bound, released against the better judgment of the adults because she really had broken no law.

"Now Harry... Ooof!"

When Dumbledore bent over Harry in what was meant to be a soothing and grandfatherly way (and just a touch domineering) he wasn't expecting the boy to get a handful of his long white beard and yank him down to eye level.

"Listen, Lemon-Breath. It's not appropriate to house one champion among the students of an opposed school. Who knows what mischief they might get up to in order to support their own side? No, to be fair to all parties the contestants need to be housed separate from the opposing factions. Therefore, Cavity King, pending the arrival of rest of my new school's delegation, I'll need a room of my own."

Dumbledore then stumbled back. For a moment he thought it was because the boy had released his hold on him, until, glancing down, he saw that Harry still held a handful of his beard, with a spray of white threads on the ground all around him.

That was when the Headmaster's hands flew to check his face and hair and realized his entire head had been shaved bald!

Azalea wordlessly vanished the mess, then smugly pocketed Harry's wand. "Sorry, Mister Dumbledore, your hair was so long and tangled I couldn't get my hand free. I guess if I'd been raised in the magical world I might've known the proper hair care charms. Instead I was forced to use one I overheard the girls use on their legs. Didn't they mention it never grows back? Surely that can't be right?"

Now bald as an egg, the Headmaster drew himself to an impressive height and ordered to his newly returned Deputy, "Professor McGonagall will lead you to your new quarters. Now run along, Harry. The adults have a few things we must discuss."

OoOoO

"What ees ze meaning of zis, Dumbly-door?" Maxime challenged imperiously. She had drawn herself up to her full, and considerable, height. The top of her handsome head brushed the candle-filled chandelier, and her gigantic black satin bosom swelled. "Ze boy ees right. We have to declare zis tournament a draw. Why are you being so stubborn?"

"I'd rather like to know that myself, Dumbledore," Professor Karkaroff wore a rather steely smile that did not look in the least amused. His eyes were like chips of ice. "We all know the rules of this tournament as well as you. What Potter proposed is not only perfectly within our powers, but reasonable as well. Declare the tournament a draw, then continue on with our current champions. We can even keep the records straight by calling it an opportunity for those not satisfied by the draw to challenge the results - a make-up test, if you will. The only thing stopping us is your stubborn refusal to go along with any of it for reasons you've failed to share."

The silence after that remark was weighty, eyes pressing down on Dumbledore.

The Hogwarts Headmaster was not at his best. This debate had been going on for five hours after they'd dismissed all of the students and champions to their assigned dorms, and they were no closer to any resolution, mainly because the other two heads of schools had openly advocated Harry's position, and Dumbledore wasn't having any of it. Nor were any of the reasons he'd brought up to defend his point his true ones, because they'd kept shooting any of his spoken objections down without budging his position.

"Alas, it is not wholly up to us any longer. By advocating a school not present, Harry has tied our hands, as it takes a unanimous vote of the school judges to declare a draw, and the Salem Witch Institute has not yet presented us with a judge."

Karkaroff was not amused. "That's a delaying tactic and you know it, Dumbledore. If that was your true reason you could've brought it up five hours ago and we'd have a judge of theirs here by now. Now could you kindly dispense with the excuses? They grow more pitiful by the hour, and I don't fancy losing any more sleep than I have already - nor are any of us leaving until this is settled. We're not children to be pushed around by you, Dumbledore."

Maxime sniffed disdainfully. "Eef zat was your chief complaint, we have an answer. Eet only takes a majority vote to alter ze tests. I vote we hold zem now, zis afternoon. First zey can take a candy egg from a tiny plush dragon toy, yez? Dive into a kiddie pool for a coin at ze bottom for ze next, ten minutes after zat. Zen play 'pin ze tail on ze donkey' for ze final. We will have results in thirty minutes. Yes? All will score full points, and we have our draw, no?"

Karkaroff gave a dark chuckle. "Come now, Dumbledore. You must see that is reasonable. I second the motion. And if you are afraid of the tournament's reputation, don't invite any but us judges and the champions themselves to attend, then forbid them from speaking of it. That frees us to hold our make-up tournament before the world without any ill repute."

Dumbledore remained stubbornly silent.

"Zis ees eenfuriating!" Madam Maxime declared, turning her back on the old man. "'E has never once offered to go along with a solution, not once!"

"I agree." Karkaroff rose, shoving off with his hands on his knees. "Come, Maxime, it's clear whatever his real reasons are he'll never divulge them. We'll never have Dumbledore's support on this, so we'll go wake Bagman and Crouch instead. They're also judges in this. Between them and us we'll have the majority we need to adjust the tests to three pass/fail competitions we can get over and done in half an hour or less. I don't know why we even bothered trying to convince this stubborn old goat. All we've done is waste time."

OoOoO

One time and dimension traveling girl had been doing anything but waste time.

The former Azalea Potter found herself living a million 'what if' fantasies. It had been easy enough to park Harry's body in his new quarters, where his dorm-mates wouldn't pick on him as the child tried to collect himself after recent events.

Leaving this world's Harry to his own body to pursue his own interests, Azalea had gone off alone fulfilling all sorts of daydreams about how things might have gone differently if only this or that had been changed right from the start.

The girl had had a busy five hours. During parts of it she'd wished she could be in thirteen different places at once. So she'd dealt with it all as if it were a medical problem: triage the issues to be dealt with in order of importance, and deal first with the things that were going to get worse until taken care of.

Survival first, then comfort and other priorities in decreasing order of urgency. You don't stop to comfort a child when you were both in a house that was on fire. First deal with immediate threats to life and property as best you can. Anything else can wait til after those are taken care of.

Azalea would never have survived a year on the run if she hadn't learned to prioritize like that, and had never been more glad for anything in her life than her off-the-cuff choice to be a Healer in that career counseling session between Umbridge and McGonagall so long ago.

They taught the aurors to fling spells, and they died like flies. But Healers got taught how to think in a crisis and survive so they could be there when everyone else needed mending.

The first thing she'd done after leaving Harry was hide her boat, as that held all of her worldly possessions and she couldn't easily stand to lose those. Then, looking at Harry's situation as though it were her own, the worst problem he had was getting robbed blind by the people who ought to have been taking care of him. His family fortune, if it was anything like hers, was bleeding money in a gushing flood - embezzled by folks like Dumbledore and Remus. And the only way to stop that was to remove their guardianships over him.

Easily enough seen to. Two quick apparations and she was standing at the Dursley house after having been to the Ministry to grab the appropriate forms. On disguising herself as a troll and gaining entry, she'd proceeded to dump Dudley into a tub full of flesh-eating slugs right before the eyes of his horrified parents; then she'd not let them take him out until they'd both signed the forms she'd brought for Harry's emancipation.

They'd signed quickly, but despite that now the pig-eyed little attempted rapist would bear scars across his body worse than they'd left on Harry's. Good for him, it built character. And not the least of her enjoyment came from knowing the little sack of puss would not be raping anyone anymore. The slugs had seen to that.

The world was a brighter place knowing that Dudley would not be having children in it. She'd enjoyed that so much she'd wanted to give Vernon a dip, but had been in a hurry. The avenging valkyrie could come back and attend to him later, at her leisure.

Once more: survival first, all other priorities second.

Chasing down Remus had been a trifle harder, as he'd not been in any of the palaces he'd bought using money plundered from her family estates. Finally she'd followed an owl to him riding on her magical horse.

She found him dwelling in a rude shack set up in a moor, and after Imperiousing him she learned this Remus Lupin was an actual werewolf, instead of merely pretending to be one for the sake of pulling off an ongoing string of pranks. And apparently that switch had been enough to prevent him from ever getting guardianship of her counterpart, or robbing the inheritance Lily and James left him. So the wolf was not Harry's godfather.

Sirius Black was.

Amazingly, her not-quite uncle was still alive. The Imperioused Remus not only knew where he was and how to find him, but most of the story involved in his capture and escape. The Harry of this world was obviously much closer to his Hermione than Azalea had been to hers, as at the end of their third year together they'd saved Sirius from being kissed by using a Time Turner the bookworm had been using to attend extra studies all that year.

Hermione had never made that offer to her, but she had to this Harry, and that had saved Sirius' life. His, and a hippogriff of Hagrid's as well.

Azalea had mixed feelings about that. That meant her adopted uncle was alive, and she felt glad for that in spite of the fact that she hardly knew him. Those few times they'd met he'd actually cared for her, and that been one of the brightest spots of her life. But on the other hand inheriting his property was what had kept her afloat. After twelve years of plundering by embezzling old men the Potter fortunes had all but vanished by this time, and it was the fresh infusion of the Black properties, accounts and estates that enabled her later escape. So this Harry was probably dirt poor by now.

Well, it couldn't be helped. First stop the injury from bleeding any more, then worry about replacing the blood already lost. She had Sirius sign the forms. Then it had been off to Salem, a simple matter of back-dating her actual school records and inserting them into the appropriate files (they even included genuine notes about how she was one of those kids that blended into the background and did not cause a fuss or make many friends among either the students or the faculty) then approaching the headmistress as a volunteer willing to go observe the Tri-Wizard Tournament and write a report on it for the school.

Since she had the records of an alumni and was willing to do this without pay, Azalea Grove got hired and sent on her way to Hogwarts as an official inter-school observer. No doubt this role would grow once they'd learned they were official participants in the tournament, and in the meantime a simple Confundus had gotten the headmistress to believe this interview had taken place a week ago (to protect her position so it appeared less suspicious when the school got involved) and also sign a form agreeing to the emancipation of young Harry Potter.

All of the official guardians and one school administrator willing to sign off that this was both needed and appropriate, and all that was left was to file the forms. That at least ought to save Harry most of his ancestral properties. Dumbledore had only really begun to sell those off once Tom Riddle had returned. The depressing thing was, most of those he'd sold had been bought by pureblood families and used to base Death Eater raids out of.

The ancient Potter families, having striven so hard to uphold the Light, had probably spun in their graves over this blatant act of desecration of their family homes. But hopefully most of that had been averted this time through.

Hopefully.

Two crises dealt with, Harry's 'protectors' no longer able to rob him blind and her own place as a Salem observer assured. Next on the list was obtaining a place for them to stay, and if she recalled correctly, the Potters had an estate right at Hogsmead.

That is, if Dumbledore hadn't sold it off yet. It was supposed to be very nice.

Then it was off to the British Ministry. She had her own supply of polyjuice potion (it was priceless as a resource for a girl on the run) and now an entire head of Dumbledore's hairs, which she had vanished into her bag instead of getting rid of entirely.

It was time to enact some new legislation.

This seemed only fair. Dumbledore had been using the Potter and Black proxies to shove his own interests forward through the courts for years, and turn about was fair play, after all. The man had been freely ignoring laws for years, anytime they got in his way, but he also knew they had a place in controlling 'lesser people', so Dumbledore had been gradually shifting the British magical environment to be more friendly to the Pureblood agenda.

Because, while their methods may differ, truly Dumbledore was no different than Voldemort - they were both of them pureblood bigots who intended the world be ruled by them, as the leaders of the pureblood cause.

Azalea had never forgotten the day she'd realized the truth, when at last after many scrapes and brushes, she'd come face to face with inescapable evidence of the truth: Dumbledore discriminated against muggleborns in every way imaginable short of denying them admission to Hogwarts altogether; and in point of fact it would be better for them if he did ban them from his school, as then they would be free to attend other magical institutions of learning where they would not be mocked and abused and denied opportunities as a matter of course.

Petunia had often complained, when she spoke of her sister at all, of how Lily came home with frog spawn in her pockets and performed freakish and abnormal things - in other words, magic. Now how was it that Lily, as a student, was able to perform magic at home when it was expressly forbidden to Azalea's generation?

Or, if she'd misunderstood and exaggerated things, and it was still illegal in Lily's time, why was it that Petunia didn't know that it was illegal for children to perform magic at home until the event with Dobby got a letter sent to her home?

That question had puzzled Azalea so she'd gone and looking it up - and the 'Reasonable Restriction on Underage Use of Magic' wasn't as old as she was! It had been okay for kids to perform magic at home during Lily's generation, yet forbidden for her daughter's.

The author of that law? Albus Dumbledore.

The 'reasonable' part of that law stated, in complicated phrases, that where there was adult magical supervision and no chance of running afoul of muggles to witness these acts it was okay. Since that 'protection from muggles' clause indicated wards that nobody but the old families could afford, what that law effectively said was that it was alright for children to use magic during their summers only if they happened to fit criteria that essentially demanded they be wealthy purebloods.

Bigotry in motion.

Once more, that was one of dozens of such laws Dumbledore had enacted using her votes by proxy. On a bit of caution, Azalea had done a quick check, and Dumbledore was the author of all of the same prejudiced legislation here in this world.

Well, turnabout was fair play. It was a little known power of the Grand Sorcerer to veto laws even long after the legislation had been passed. So, using polyjuice to look like him, little Azalea had gone to the Ministry to enact all of the necessary changes to repeal every law Albus had ever written, participated in sponsoring, or voted for.

And then she did the same for any law Malfoy had been behind, as between them there was no bill forwarding the pureblood agenda that had been put into law they had not been directly involved in sponsoring.

Then it was time to go hunting.

Azalea was a big fan of catching your enemies with their pants down and then kicking them in the nuts. After all, Dumbledore's Order had deliberately attacked her in the bath, or while showering often enough for her to fully realize how very different a combat situation was when one side was disadvantaged like that.

Careful people put spells up to protect them while they are asleep all of the time. While they are showering? Not so much.

So anyway, having learned from both sides of the War for Pureblood Supremacy that catching your enemies off their guard was a good thing (after all, she ought to know from when six school kids faced down twelve of Voldemort's inner circle during her fifth year and that whole Department of Mysteries fiasco, that Death Eaters were at their best torturing helpless opponents they'd attacked during the dead of night - and weren't worth much in a direct, stand-up fight) she went to go call on some 'former' Death Eaters.

Still wearing Dumbledore's face and robes transfigured to look like his, of course.

Now there were two very good reasons for this, three actually: The first was naturally to get Dumbledore in trouble, seeing as she'd be leaving witnesses behind as she went on a mad killing spree among the pureblood households in the dead of night. And seeing as how justice was anything but just in the magical world, there was no way he was getting cleared of these crimes.

Served the old coot right. He'd done it often enough to Sirius and others.

In the second place it diminished the army of Voldemort, so that when he returned he'd have only a fraction of his original forces, and a much smaller talent pool to draw on to get his new recruits from. Those potential recruits would also be scared of open conflict, having been on the receiving end of being murdered in their beds once.

People like Draco, with a sure sense of his own invulnerability, would join up in a heartbeat. However, scared people feeling helpless do not go to war willingly - As Snape had proved when a generation of Light supporters who'd been routinely bullied by him at school and learned to tolerate and accept abuse from the pureblood Slytherins rolled over and accepted defeat the instant Voldemort returned.

Those children's parents had fought him the first time. But when he returned the second their spirits and will to resist had already been broken at school by Snape, who'd taught them that no pureblood would ever be punished for abusing anyone else, and that if those people stood up to his bullies he'd only crush them harder.

A system of Abuse that Albus had to have condoned, because without his active protection and approval it could never have occurred.

So anyway, killing off Voldemort's forces when they were at their ease not ready for war was an excellent strategy all by itself, and blaming Dumbledore for it only made things better. However, there was a third benefit that could be wrung from this, and it was her double's poverty that made Azalea think of it.

She'd been robbed blind by her guardians and only an inheritance from Sirius kept her finances afloat long enough to escape her tormentors. Only Sirius hadn't died in this timeline, so this Harry was going to be as poor as the Weasleys, unless he sold some properties, which was in general a very bad thing to do in wizarding politics. It lessened your power.

Anyway, if he wasn't going to get an inheritance from Sirius (and Azalea would rather have her uncle than his money) then why not get an inheritance from elsewhere?

Money never just vanished. It always went someplace, and the purebloods had made sure that the Ministry could never just grab it, as the muggle government often did. It was a little like the crown that way. In a monarchy, SOMEBODY would wind up on the throne! No matter how many claimants you removed, there'd still be someone left to inherit.

The purebloods were going to be dying tonight anyway. But it was a little known fact that, just like a royal succession, with a little effort you could control who got the prize in the end.

For example, take the LeStranges (Please!). Bellatrix Black had married into that family and they were all, the lot of them, worthy of death. Yet if you killed Bellatrix first her money and holdings naturally went to her husband. Then on his death they went to his brother, then so on to Malfoy and some others who made up a very close-knit circle.

However, reverse the order instead. So the brother dies first and his money and holdings go to Bella's husband. The husband then kicks the bucket and everything goes to Bella, then when SHE dies it all reverts back to the House of Black.

Simple. You do it one way, Malfoy gets all the gold, investments and properties. You do it the other and Black does.

Since Sirius Black was her friend and godfather, and most definitely on the Light side, it was a choice between day or night. Either Light got the money or Dark did depending on how you do it. And since money and estates were power, she'd rather Light got it than Dark.

Easy.

Only this whole thing worked on a much broader scale than that. Her example used only one family, LeStranges to Blacks. But ALL of the purebloods were related and had mutual arrangements like that, so if you wipe out this family, then that one, then that one, you could conceivably own the whole pie if you did things in the correct order. You just had to understand who had willed what to whom, or who would get the inheritance lacking one, to plot a vast financial takeover.

Voldemort had been trying that with some success during both wars. Families who had no idea they were targets as they'd never opposed him got wiped out because they were the next link in line to drop the accumulated fortunes of countless deaths on the Gaunts, and thus to Tom Riddle directly.

That, plus a little robbery and later extortion from his followers, got him all of his money. But, well, it was a simple enough matter now to declare him legally dead, then start the whole ball rolling again. From the Gaunts it went to Tom Riddle, who had no other magical ties, and heaven forbid any pureblood fortunes go to nonmagical relations, so from him it went to the nearest living magical relative, who happened to be a distant cousin.

It would be a nightmare to work out exactly who, save for the fact that there was an entire department in the Ministry of Magic devoted to tracking that. They kept current with all births and deaths, constantly updating their charts, and seemed obsessive about their work to the point that you could name anybody at all in the magical world and they already knew who'd inherit their estate should that person drop dead that minute.

Copies of those charts were available for seven sickles apiece, so you too could know who would inherit what from whom. Though of course the civilian version did not get the constant updates of the Ministry records.

That provided the raw material, but it would still be a lot of work to determine an sequence for who had to die in what order, except, luckily, wizards were lazy like that and Voldemort had already invented a spell, a complicated little bit of arithmancy that you could cast on a set of those charts that would tell you exactly who had to die and in what order for whoever you wanted to wind up with the whole vast pile of wealth.

Remus had shown her that spell once, back when they were trying to convince her to go off against Voldemort. They likely never thought she'd use it, or even learn it. She'd long since discovered that she'd never been intended to survive that fight.

Naturally, on checking those charts she'd discovered Dumbledore had placed himself as the sole heir to her property and estates. He just hadn't bothered to have the courtesy to wait until she'd died to start plundering them for his own benefit. On picking up a copy of that chart for this world, Azalea checked and, yes, Dumbledore had made himself Harry's sole beneficiary and heir in this world too. The sneaky little rotten bastard.

Oh, well. He'd get his, and not in any way he might've intended.

Then, since she'd had to wake half the Ministry and drag them into work anyway just to get those laws vetoed, she also made sure to have 'Dumbledore' publicly resign from all of his positions after that had been done, giving a mournful speech wherein he cited as his reason for retiring the fact that he'd been deceived nearly his whole life into following a false agenda - one which he now bitterly regretted in the wisdom of his growing old age.

Then, to make it doubly hard for the old fart to get his jobs back, she appointed others in his stead to replace him, people who Azalea had the least poor opinions of - chiefly people who'd moved out of Britain in her world; although her cousin Dora Tonks had been a decent sort and one of her few real friends up until her husband Remus Lupin had betrayed her to death (in part because she'd begun disagreeing with Dumbledore) so she got the Chief Mugwump slot, despite not even having graduated as an auror yet. Each of his former jobs was now held by a different person, so Dumbledore would have to impeach the credibility of them all in order to get his positions back.

Let the old fart deal with THAT!

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

I have pretty much decided that this Dumbledore is not wholly innocent, but neither is he as bad as the twisted tyrant Azalea remembers. He still pursues the pureblood agenda (rule of muggles by wizards - and by extension, muggleborns being second class citizens) because, frankly, that's the Dumbledore Rowling gave us. And he is out chiefly for himself. But he's not going to be nearly the mastermind of, say, Perfect Lionheart's story: Partially Kissed Hero.

Thus he is going to be more than slightly surprised by the sudden and vicious nature of this unexpected assault.

She is used to doing battle with evil giants, and he is simply corrupt. 


	4. Chapter 4

Azalea Potter and the Boy-who-Lived

Chapter 4

by Skysaber  
aka Lionheart

OoOoO

Dozens of pureblood manors burned that night. The survivors, any innocent of wrongdoing in the last war, had been left alive as horrified witnesses to Dumbledore's crimes, and were left running this way and that clutching what few possessions they could rescue, whilst aurors scrambled to try and intercept Dumbledore's murders - as always, one step behind and minutes too late, just like they'd done during both wars versus Voldemort.

Azalea had to admit that it was exhausting, doing a reign of terror wearing Dumbledore's face all in one night. So, as she left the latest burning home of the newly departed and noticed dawn had broken over the horizon, the avenging valkyrie admitted her fatigue and decided to call it a night.

Getting a safe distance away and reverting to her normal form, one that she was satisfied to say looked remarkably like her mother, Azalea brushed her long red hair back out of her face. She had to admit to a certain vanity in that department - her looks were one of the few things that she'd gotten from her parents that hadn't been stolen from her by her guardians.

The one change she'd allowed that ritual to make to her appearance had been to give her her mother's eyes instead of her father's. Creamy brown, while nice on some people, was just not the best look paired with her mother's shade of red hair. Shocking emerald was far better for her looks.

Turning to mount her steed, as riding flying horses was one of the few forms of magical transport that could not be traced by magical means, Azalea patted her mount's neck and told it in tired tones, "Home, Jeeves."

Having never been much of an equestrian before, frankly never having been on anything even vaguely horse-shaped until that Care of Magical Creatures lesson with Hagrid, the girl then cast a sticking charm between her and the saddle, then shrank herself so she could curl up on it like a leather bed. The first few hours of riding a magical horse had left her hips and thighs screaming bloody murder, so she'd taken to riding pixie sized and reclined instead. Azalea ruefully reflected that if not for a virginity protection charm she would've been bleeding over the saddle.

It wasn't exactly elegant, not what she'd envisioned for herself when getting a flying steed, but the young girl admitted that for now sitting astride her mount still hurt too much.

Jeeves waited for her to be secure, having spilled his mistress more than once that night, then leaped up into the air, powerful wings beating out long strokes, clawing for altitude and rising into the sunrise. As he did so, Azalea directed a tired eye to the ground rapidly falling away below them and marveled at him leaving not a hoof print behind. She understood it was part of the magic of being a valkyrie, that Choosers Of The Slain had to be untraceable even by magic or else they couldn't do their jobs, but it was still new enough to her that she felt amazement every time she caught those powers working.

Right now Azalea groaned, feeling tired despite sleeping for what had probably been months on that boat ride between worlds. Going to sleep in late July and waking up on the last day of October when the Tournament started was not what she'd been expecting.

Still, if it was going to be this year it almost had to be that day, didn't it?

As the wind of her mount's passage blew past her, Azalea gave leave to herself for a little good-natured grumbling. Never mind the year, she had never had a good Halloween, and the day she was picked as a champion in the Tri-Wizard was arguably the second worst of the lot. Prize for worst of all had to go to that dreadful day when her parents died, as all misery in her life seemed to have flowed out of that one, horrible moment. But second place had to be the Tri-Wizard, as most of the rest started with that one.

But no use grumbling over spilled milk, as fate had already begun to change.

She'd been up all night working on various projects, and wasn't even half done killing off all of the Death Eaters who had to die. One thing about that operation to steal all of their gold and property via inheritance was that it could not be done too fast, because if there was any confusion about if Person X died before Person Y then the whole cascading accumulation of fortunes could be diverted to the wrong targets.

She would have to slow down from here on out to keep things clear.

Plus there was so much else to do!

Her strategy so far had been simple: kill a raft of Voldemort's supporters, then go off and do something else for an hour or so, before going and killing off another wave of traitors and murderers so the records would be clear about who died in what order.

Still, she was exhausted, and had done enough for tonight.

OoOoO

The Potter estate near Hogsmead was built into the side of a mountain and was partly subterranean, although the insides had their own lush greenery, lakes and waterfalls. Many ceilings had the same enchantments as the roof of the Great Hall (in fact a distant Potter ancestor was the one to do both enchantments).

It was, indeed, quite lovely.

Azalea broke into the place using her abilities as a valkyrie, then once inside the wards found herself a good, soft bed and crashed, staying awake only just long enough to use an aspect of Chi Sorcery to enhance the value of rest she was to receive, speeding up her recovery so she'd get double the normal value for sleep.

She could have used Native American Shamanism to go without the need for rest entirely for the day, but didn't have an iguana on hand to sacrifice. Besides, that was kind of icky. A last resort, more than a favored option, and she wasn't that desperate now.

October 31st in 1994 was a Monday. Still, what with having kept all of the students up with the excitement of the champions having been chosen, Azalea was not the only one to get a late start, having a quick lunch before heading up to the castle.

No, but if her memories were anything to go by, she *was* probably alone in hunting for Harry Potter, who was being outcast and isolated by rumors that day.

She found him, not in any of her favorite spots to cry, but flying about the quidditch pitch. It would not have been her first choice, but flying chaser drills had always relaxed her and helped her to think, so she summoned her broom and stopped by the broom shed to pick up a quaffle and pads, and flew up to meet him.

He missed her first pass so badly she almost didn't catch it before it hit the ground. Then she thought to just fly in synch with him for a while so they got a better feel for each other's movements, only the kid had no concept of flying in formation at all!

It was almost like he was *trying* to shake her off! No Chaser would... Then it struck her that he might not have made the quidditch team at all. The circumstances that led to her being on it were pretty unique, after all, what with half the class (the male half) of her first flying lesson determined to fly under her to get a glimpse of her panties.

Why did they never warn the girls not to wear the official uniform skirt to flying lessons?

Anyway, what with dodging a dozen pre-teen boys crowding in from all sides trying to get boasting rights of having seen her panties, she'd impressed McGonagall enough to get an introduction to Oliver Wood, who took her out to test her abilities and made her a Chaser on the spot, beating out Katie Bell, the reserve from last year, for the spot and forcing the other girl to play Seeker instead.

Being quick and agile, with good hands and a better eye, Azalea had been the highest scoring Chaser in centuries, not to mention the youngest in four. But they'd been weak enough on the Seeker side the Gryffindor team hadn't won many games. Those hundred and fifty points were an insult to the skills of every other player. Gryffindor had the best team overall, with the best players in every position sans one, but won very few games.

Azalea now felt a little sorry for the lad. Even though they hadn't won very often, Quidditch had been one of the few genuine reliefs during her life - when professors or house elves or dementors were not trying to kill her during games, that was.

But it was obvious now in retrospect that nobody would have been flying around this boy in clouds trying to stare up at his underwear. He'd had trousers to protect his modesty. So without that odd sequence of events, he'd probably never been on the team, seeing as how no first years were allowed to try out, and by second Ron, her chief detractor, would've had a whole year to tease and belittle any hint of confidence out of him.

Heck, Harry couldn't even do as she'd done to escape Ron's teasing by fleeing up the stairs to the female side of the dormitory!

Now feeling genuinely sorry for the lad, Azalea determined that she could do him one more favor at least before getting to that overdue introduction.

Shamans on little places like Easter Island often had a strictly oral tradition for passing on their history and important legends and such. Apparently lazy apprentices were a problem all the world over because dozens of those isolated lorekeepers had independently come up with the same spell - one for ramming a large block of information into an otherwise blank spot in someone else's mind.

She signaled to him to land, and thankfully he knew that much. They pulled up together outside of the Quidditch equipment shed and before he could open his mouth to ruin things and convince her not to (Azalea had, it must be admitted, little enough trust in people) she went ahead and cast the spell to give him her skill and knowledge of Quidditch.

It did not go quite the way she had intended.

Azalea found herself reliving those games as a Seeker, winning victory after victory, even as her own countless losses after intensive practice and brilliant plays played side by side, in synch with each other, viewing what were mostly the same practice sessions and games from completely different angles.

"Ouch! I'm never going to do *that* again!" Azalea promised herself, rubbing her temples.

The spell was supposed to hurt, but only the recipient! But, then again, she'd forgotten that a killing curse had once bounced off of this boy's forehead if his story was anything like her own. Maybe this was related to that? Then again, the spell was also supposed to transfer knowledge onto a blank slate, and now she knew for a fact he wasn't that.

Kid was a Seeker. What's more, she even knew how that happened, and what games he'd played and how those had turned out. It seems he'd had the same murder attempts after him, teachers cursing his broom, dementors, rogue bludgers and all, but he'd still won most of those games. Blasted hundred and fifty points!

Still, she felt some of her anti-Seeker prejudice depart, seeing things from his perspective.

"Wow! What was that?" Azalea's attention got drawn back to Harry, who was still rubbing his forehead after making that comment.

"A spell from Easter Island. It wasn't supposed to do that." Azalea answered. "I saw you didn't know Chaser drills or formation flying and just assumed you didn't know Quidditch at all. My mistake. I'm sorry."

Harry stopped rubbing and looked up at her suspiciously. He'd had few enough people apologize to him during his life, and coming right on the heels of his best friend betraying him after being entered into this tournament... well, not a lot of good things had been happening to him today. That's why he'd been trying to relax on the pitch.

And now he had a headache to deal with on top of everything else. But what really got to him was the confusion. He cocked his head at this stranger. "How did you get me to relive all of my games as a Chaser? You even had the two I'd missed in there, back from when I was staying in the Hospital Wing."

Yeah. She'd noticed he'd been absent for those. Now she knew where he was, but not why. Then again, he wouldn't have researched anti-rape charms during first year after the looks Snape had been giving her. So Quirrel might've done more than touch him and get blasted across the chamber for his troubles. And if he'd been injured during that whole philosopher stone fiasco that could easily explain missing a game.

She'd learned not to trust authority figures early on in her life. The Dursleys had been good teachers on that point.

But you couldn't cast anti-rape charms out of Hogwarts. Oh, of course not. Who could be silly enough to want to do that? And once it got bandied about that she used them (by Ron getting blasted across a hall after he tried to steal a grope almost as soon as she'd entered her teens), other students began to learn the counters for them.

The only spells without counters were the Unforgivables. And at Malfoy's request Snape had taught him private lessons on counters for the anti-rape charms, which had turned into classes in the Slytherin dormitories where virtually every male attended. So by the time her fourth year had started those charms were no longer any protection of her virtue at all.

Naturally nothing had been done to stop or reprimand the disgusting teacher as he made every girl in the wizarding world more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. A reprimand for the Headmaster's pet? No. Of course not. Out of the question! If Dumbledore were given a clear choice between the future of every student at his school, the life of every Light wizard, and the virtue of every witch in the world all piled up on one side, and Snape's comfort on the other, he'd choose Snape's comfort every time.

Every. Stinking. Time!

And she ought to know, seeing as she'd witnessed him do it on countless occasions. But while she'd been stewing over her thoughts this world's Harry had gotten a good look at her, and frozen in shock. "M... mum?"

Azalea brought herself back to the present and shook her head, red hair flying. "No, sorry. I've never done anything that could lead to me being a mother, not even close. And, besides, I'm not old enough to have a child your age in any case."

But the native Harry's gaze didn't waver. His eyes narrowed, and he pressed on, asking her, "What year is this?"

"Ninety four. What year were you expecting? Azalea had checked dates while she was out.

"Oh," Harry tossed out his half-formed concept of some time accident bringing his mother to his side when he needed some advice and consolation. Azalea had to smirk as she saw his thoughts. She had to give him points, though. After the time-turner incident he'd had last year, the idea wasn't too far-fetched.

Actually, barring the fact that she wasn't his mother, it even had a grain of truth to it, in that she, a female relative, had been moved through time to visit him just now - and he really could use her support. Just leave out the across dimensions bit and he had guessed pretty close.

Good to see him using his brain.

Only now he was getting confused again.

She rubbed her temples. She really didn't want to do this, but had sort of trapped herself with that game sharing. So he'd figure it out eventually, if she didn't tell him, and it was better to try and make him an ally first. "Alright Harry, this may be a little hard to accept, but I'm you from a different universe. Everyone I knew either betrayed me or died, so I moved on, and found myself here just as you were getting chosen by that goblet. So I tried to help you out in the way that I'd always wished someone had helped me."

She met his eyes, slightly scared to until this point.

The boy barreled into her in a hug, sobbing about family.

OoOoO

Azalea found herself both pleased and disturbed by how quickly and effortlessly this world's Harry trusted her. ~Was I ever that naive?~

What's worse, she found herself responding to it, accepting the flood of happy emotion he was giving off over having someone he could trust right when he needed them most. The kid was experiencing something she'd have given anything for in her youth, to have a family member you could trust show up and make things better - and now she really couldn't let him down on that without feeling it was an unforgivable breach of trust.

She would have felt terrible if someone had offered her younger self this chance, only for it to be snatched away.

So that's why she found herself dragging him into the Room of Requirement. "Okay, Harry," and she felt a private thrill of glee over knowing that the hated nickname of 'Harri' was never going to get applied to her again, what with an actual Harry about to claim it. "We've to get you ready for this tournament. First we'll cover the first year material..."

"But I already know that!" Harry protested.

The redhaired girl turned toward him, calmly and without saying anything, just looking at him, and he had a feeling like he'd just claimed to be an Olympic class weight lifter or something else truly outrageous. But that wasn't right. He DID know the first year material, right? They had covered that years ago!

"Tell me, Potter," Azalea asked calmly. "Do you know the Alohamora charm?"

Harry opened his mouth to say of course he knew of it, but then saw her eyes.

"I wasn't asking if you've seen it. I know you were about to say Hermione uses it all of the time. I am asking if *you* know how to cast that spell."

Harry shrugged. It couldn't be *that* hard, could it?

"So you've never cast it before, but don't want to admit it," Azalea told him his private thoughts aloud. "How about that spell to repair your glasses? Have you ever *cast* that, or just seen it cast?"

Harry squirmed uncomfortably, not looking in her direction.

"Uh huh," she nodded, convincing Harry that she knew full well that he hadn't. "How about the clothes-mending charm? Ever cast that?" This time she didn't wait for an answer. "You know, that is one of the things that convinces everyone you know in the magical world that you WANT to look like a ragamuffin or street beggar, wearing trainers that are held together by tape. The spells to fix them and make your clothes fit are first year material. You could have made those rags into decent things to wear when you were a firsty if you'd wanted to. So everyone, even Hermione and Ron, are convinced you don't really want to."

Harry opened his mouth to protest that of *course* he wanted to wear something other than Dudley's hand-me-down rags, but it died in his throat when he met her eyes.

She knew that. She also knew that he didn't know how to, or had never thought to, change that himself. He'd been waiting for some adult to make things better. And with her standing there telling him how he could've changed that situation himself, he felt pretty dumb.

"How about bruise-healing paste? That would have made your summers with the Dursleys a much more bearable experience, wouldn't it? Just fix yourself up after all of those bruises you seem to collect over there, as good as Madam Pomfrey, no need to wait through the misery of letting them heal naturally. That would've been great, huh?"

Harry's face flushed. Yes, that *would've* been great! Too bad he'd never thought of it.

Azalea smacked her lips. "So, Potter. Why don't you know this stuff? Everything I just named is first year material. So if you know everything from first year then you know this and have been using it all along, right?"

She looked rather pointedly downward, to where the tip of one of his held-together-by-tape trainers was poking out from under the hem of his robe.

The boy flushed with embarrassment, without anything to say.

Azalea sighed, and rolled her eyes, backing off on the pressure she'd put on him. "I'll tell you what happened. The Dursleys beat you so often for 'being a freak' that deep down in your insides they convinced you that if only you were normal, someone would love you. So you show up to Hogwarts and what do you do? You latch onto the first person who shows you the least affection and try to be just like them, and that person was Ron. And guess what? He is one of the poorest students Hogwarts has ever seen. So you matched your study habits to his, trying to win approval, and what happened is that you learned practically nothing, only barely enough to get by. And guess what? That's not enough."

Azalea took him by the chin and lifted his head to look him in the eye. "Because, Harry, you have not one but several dark wizards out to kill you. So far you've survived by luck, but I can tell you from personal experience that this year your luck has run out. Always before you have skated through, but never again will luck deliver you a pure victory. From now on, if you rely on luck to pull you out of crises, then someone on your side will die pulling you out of the danger you keep stumbling into. And they'll die each time you need rescuing."

The boy's look was wide-eyed and horrified.

She continued to look him directly in the eye. "So this is it, Potter. You want someone to love you. But unless you learn how to take care of yourself, that someone, even if you get them, will be killed by the danger you have been too lazy to learn how to pull yourself out of. What will it be? Are you going to learn how to handle things yourself, or are you going to let your loved ones die doing what you should have done for yourself?"

After that, the results on Harry's study habits were predictable. He would throw himself into the work with the energy of a man possessed.

Good for him.

Seeing that devotion form, Azalea beamed at him. "Lucky thing is, so far you are only three years behind on your studies. That's something we can catch you up on fairly quickly, especially with this place." She waved to indicate the room around them.

"What is this place?" Harry looked around, curious at last.

"The Room of Requirements, one of the greatest treasures of this castle," Azalea answered, "and all but forgotten by all and sundry, used as a broom closet to stash things in to hide them as much as anything, an embarrassing waste of its true potential."

Seeing he was about to ask, she answered for him, "One of the many things this room can do is speed up your perception of time. Not time itself, that's advanced magic that was not invented when this room was made, but almost as good if not better to do it this way. Oh, come on, haven't you ever had a class that seemed to last a thousand years, or a day that was just wonderful be over in what seemed like an instant? That isn't all in your head, you know. Even muggles have noticed that time may well not be a constant, that it may in truth pass at different rates for different people, even in the same room. To them it is just a theory, one very hard to prove at that, but with magic we can actually measure the flow of time somewhat, and it really is different for different folks, who can be in the same place, and can vary quite widely for the same person at different times."

She bounced perkily on her toes, spinning in place, arms wide, to indicate the room they were in. "That's part of what makes this place so wonderful! Some people in this castle are, right at this moment, experiencing a very slow rate of time. This room can collect that, so their day gets over faster, and we get the benefit of having hours that seem to go on for days, in a room that is tuned to help us take full advantage of every moment!"

Coming to a stop after her spin, she leaned forward and told Harry, "Basically, in this place we get to use about ten times as much time as passes outside, if we want to. That's good! In one week out there, we'll have enjoyed ten weeks to study in here. That's enough to go back and cover your first year material thoroughly and in detail. Two more weeks out there and we'll have caught you up on everything you might have known if you'd really buckled down and studied hard during your second year. It'll take three more weeks for third, as they cover more material each year, so that will overflow a bit until after the first task, but we'll get you up to speed fast using this method, until by the end of this year you ought to be much more equal with the other school's champions. And this whole thing is geared toward their theoretical level of ability, if not higher, so reaching parity with them is not only good for this contest, you'll have a much better chance against those dark wizards trying to kill you."

Harry, while confused, was willing, so he cocked his head in confusion and asked. "How are we going to do that? I don't have my books with me, and I'm sure not everything that was taught was in my class notes."

Azalea's grin was both mischievous and triumphant. "Simple, actually. This room is an integral part of this castle, and the wards of the castle monitor very carefully what goes on inside it. What most *don't* know is that Hogwarts is at least slightly alive, so it has a memory. Just like the Weasley car, which was able to recognize you and Ron after not seeing either of you for most of a year; although the school is a great deal smarter than that, and KNOWS it is a school, so records most of the good lectures and stuff. So, here..."

All of a sudden they were standing in a classroom full of students, with a teacher at the front, everything except them frozen in place like a muggle photograph. Harry didn't recognize anyone, but they all looked to be first years. Azalea pointed out one. "That little boy is going to grow up to become Transfiguration Professor, then Headmaster. His name is Albus Dumbledore. But he was never as good a teacher as the man who taught him, and his student Minerva was never quite as good as Albus was. So, for the record, the best Transfiguration teacher this school has had in a very long while is the man at the head of this classroom right now, and the wards and thus the castle and thus this room has recorded all of his lectures. Let's listen to one now, do the work, then go on to see who the best Charms teacher was, shall we?"

"Is this real?" Harry blurted, not quite understanding.

"No," Azalea corrected. "More like a tape recording. But professors don't normally interact with each and every student. You wanted to be normal? This is it. The experience we'll get is pretty much identical to what two ordinary students who don't ask any questions or cause a fuss would get out of this class."

"But what if we do have questions?" Harry frowned.

Azalea snickered. "Harry, do you think that we are the only students to ever get confused over an issue? If it was something we missed in the lecture, the Room can just replay that part for us. But if it is something else, I can pretty much guarantee you some other student has gotten confused by the same thing over the past thousand years or so this castle has been a school. So anything we might ask, someone else already did, and the wards were there to detect and record the question and its answer. It'll just play that for us!"

Taking two empty seats next to each in the middle of the class (the back was already filled with rowdy students, and the front by eager beavers, so the mostly anonymous sections in the middle had some clear space), Azalea produced two quills and stacks of parchment from out of her bookbag, which she'd had with her before entering the Room. "Here. An auto-notes quill. When you try and split your attention between taking notes and listening to the lecture most people tend not to do very well at either. So pay your full attention to the teacher, and let your quill handle taking notes for you. It will record everything that is said, so you don't have to worry about it not doing a good enough job."

Harry's mind was spinning. But he sighed, then drew himself up and gave his companion a lopsided grin. "Well," he said, trying to be cheerful, "At least we don't have to do homework."

"No," Azalea corrected sternly. "We will *do* the homework." Her voice left no question of this, as she went on to explain, "Part of the learning process is to study it out for yourself, to fix what we heard in the lecture into our minds, and that is what homework is for. So we will do all of it. Hogwarts knows what the assignments are to be, and can compare our work against enough other students, and what they did right or wrong. It will be as if the teacher is grading our work. Besides," here she flashed her companion a grin, "the school also knows all of the best parts of the best books to read over to do the assignments, and can make those available for us. So you don't have to worry, everything will be arranged to give us the best possible learning experience for us."

At that statement a cloud passed over Harry's face, and his eyes grew downcast. "I..." He licked his lips, raising his eyes despite being plainly unhappy. "Hearing you say that I thought of how happy that would make Hermione. I just wish... she..."

He swallowed hard, unable to continue.

Azalea patted his arm comfortingly. "I know, Harry. I know."

Inwardly, she was plotting how to make him happy. And if there wasn't a way to make certain of his friends reliable before they went too far astray into Dumbledore's camp.

In fact...

"You stay right there, Harry. I'll go see if I can fetch them," Azalea told the boy. Brought up short by a new thought, she quickly scribbled on some paper and gave it to him to sign, "Here, if you'll just affix your signature to that, I'm certain I'll have no trouble bringing them back to study with you."

Trusting, the boy did so.

The girl didn't even bother concealing her smirk as she bounced out of the Room.

OoOoO

"Ah, Albus," Professor McGonagall greeted her Headmaster, or so she supposed (word of his resignation last night not having yet reached the school this morning), "I see you are starting another head of hair. Poppy was able to reverse the charms, then?"

"Alas, no," the Headmaster greeted his Deputy, showing a fine white fuzz all over his head, chin and neck. "She reports that never before had she been asked to, and as she was dealing with the aftermath of a fight in the halls, I did not press the issue. I was forced to look up the counters myself. Fortunately, everything but the Unforgivables has a counter." He made a slight grimace. "Although, I admit, it was an unexpectedly difficult spell to reverse."

McGonagall fought down an amused smirk with the ease of long practice. "Well, it is meant to be permanent, Albus."

"Indeed," the man came up and put an arm on her shoulders, turning the woman about so they could head into the Great Hall together. "Now about..."

"THERE HE IS!" Heads snapped up as several aurors shouted, pointing at Albus.

Spells were flying before either school administrator had figured out what was going on.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Azalea really is more harsh than my standard cast of characters, so I've pretty much resolved that this Harry will mellow her out substantially by the time they are done adjusting to each other.

Not, of course, that there won't be fireworks going off in the meantime! 


End file.
